A Commission of Inquiries on Stateland has warned land developers against the continued selling of land in reserved areas during a press conference in Harare today.
Chairperson of the Inquiries into the matter of sale of state land in and around urban areas since 2005, Tendai Muchena was giving an update on the progress made by the commission since its appointment
“We have noted with concern that the public continues to purchase urban state land, stands from cooperatives and developers who fail to follow due process in the selling, allocation, development, and servicing of urban state land,” Muchena said.
The Zimbabwe government has in the past demolished houses claiming that they were constructed on undesignated lands.
The inquiries chairperson revealed that the commission made inquiries on 79 farms in urban state lands around Zimbabwe.
“Cooperatives, developers, local authorities, individual state land sellers and any other state land actors are warned against continued sale of state land in places where the commission has expressed reservations against the sell of such state land,” Muchena said.
“We advise members of the public to desist from purchasing the stands on state lands for urban expansion before verifying with the Ministry of Local Government on whether the sellers of such land have authority to sell the land.”
Issues of bogus land developers selling unauthorized land and non-existent stands have been reported in Zimbabwe with the Harare City Council with the people in diaspora being victimized.
Past actions against houses on undesignated land have led to the displacement of families and loss of income activities amongst the informal sector in Zimbabwe.
An estimate varying from 300 000 to over million people were displaced and hundreds of thousands more lost their sources of income in the informal sector during Operation Murambatsvina, a government action which started on 25 May 2005 according to the Relief Web.